Volume 1, Number 5 - June/July 1998

BSC recently spoke with David Thompson of San Diego Safe Communities 2000 and Martha Stowe of the Greater Dallas Injury Prevention Center. The following are some principles of citizen involvement extracted from these conversations:

• Start with citizens who have credibility within the community. They can lend “weight” to a program. Citizens who are already formal or informal community leaders can help identify others who may be willing to participate. Networking through citizens or other partners can be an effective way of recruiting participants.

• Recruit citizens who are or have been active in other injury prevention or traffic safety efforts. Their motivation, experience, and knowledge will be valuable assets.

• Try to find citizen participants who reflect the groups that live in the community. Recruit people from different ethnic backgrounds, age groups, and income levels; they have strengths and skills to contribute. Focus groups can be a valuable method of assessing the community’s perception of its injury problems and how these problems can be addressed.

• Have clear and compelling goals that create a vision of how the community can be made a safer place to live. Citizens are more likely to become involved if they believe their efforts will make a difference.

• Understand and explain that government agencies cannot solve injury problems alone. Safe Communities does not just come into a community and solve problems. Its success requires the active participation of citizens.

• Collect and analyze local data and present it to citizens in a clear and understandable manner. Citizens are more likely to participate if they have information on their own communities, rather than just state or national data. But also pay attention to citizens’ perceptions of community injury problems. Data can then be used to confirm, disprove, or refine these perceptions. While data is important, injury prevention activities cannot be completely data-driven. Programs need to respect community priorities.

• Keep the public informed. Work with local media and community groups to spread the word about Safe Communities. Showing the community that Safe Communities makes a difference is an effective way of attracting additional citizen participants, coalition partners, and resources. Informed and enthusiastic public support can make a critical difference to program success and sustainability.

Top of Page